National Security Council
Colleagues, good morning and welcome to the White House!
The fact that you are here today already speaks highly of you all, considering the demanding education requirements, professional skills and personal integrity required to serve in this office.
My name is Keith Kellogg, a retired Army Lt. Gen. I was recently appointed as chief of staff and executive secretary of the National Security Council. You may have seen my name in media headlines branding me as the top spy and the right hand of the National Security Adviser to the President (Bender, 2016). The realities are slightly different. As you can see, I do not wear dark shades and black shoes and I have no secret gadgets stuck on me. Indeed, none of us has them here in this Office. At this level, we function differently. I will briefly introduce you to the basics of who we are, what we do, the political environment we work in and the impact of our work.
For a good reason, the US President’s Office is the home of your new employer, the National Security Council, or as we call it, the NSC. The National Security Council (NSC) is the country’s highest discussion and decision making body on national security and foreign policy. It was established in 1947 and it has been located in the Executive Office of the President since 1949 – for a good reason, given the intensive 24/7 work duties of the Chair of the NSC - the President of the United States (National Security Council).
The main functions of the Council are to advise and assist the President and to coordinate on national security and foreign policy with other government agencies.
Regular members who sit at Council meetings are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the statutory military advisor to the Council, and the Director of National Intelligence is the intelligence advisor. The President’s Chief of Staff, the President’s Counsel and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are invited to attend. The Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget are invited to attend when issued of their competence are discussed. The President would often convene extended meetings and invite, when the President invites the heads of other executive departments and agencies and senior officials.
The US President selects and appoints NSC senior staff. Quite naturally, every new president would commence with reshuffles and new senior staff appointments at the NSC.
This is not the venue and the moment to brief you about staff numbers, the structure of the Council and the standard rules of operation and security. Each one of you will receive job specific induction briefing by the department and section heads.
I would like to share with you a few words about two of the main fields of hard work at the NSC these days – Cyber Security and the Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. Cyber security and a reliable internet have become an essential factor for advancing the country’s economy, ensuring the national security as wee as the individual human rights and liberties of the citizens. In this field, the NSC spares no efforts to gather and analyze intelligence in an efficient, transparent and uncompromising way. At this level, the security of the nation is above any individual or partisan interests. As a staffer of the newly inaugurated president, I wish to add that one of our first tasks in the months ahead shall be to enhance disrupted relations with our media and harmonize strategies towards our common goals – defending the US democracy and civil liberties, but also reaching out and looking for every unique opportunity to improve relations of cooperation with our neighbors, our world allies and not least, with some key international interlocutors and opponents. This will be a most challenging task, given the latest proofs of evidence that the Russian leadership has consistently used sophisticated cyber methods as well straightforward hacking techniques to interfere in our home politics and disrupt our homeland security system. We have in the pipeline a series of targeted NSC meetings where we will make full use of our competencies and skills towards a helpful discussion with the President on this topic.
We will work to improve the Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime which was promoted and conducted by the previous US President in 2011(National Security Council). This will be one of your first files to read, regardless whether you are assigned to the Mexico desk, the Middle East, Regional Affairs or Terrorism and Money Laundering.
Diversity as the core of our national identity: I wish to dissuade apprehensions voiced by our critics that the new Administration might step back from the policy of improving racial and gender diversity in security staff recruitment. I will recall the words of Ambassador Rice (2016) that minorities still form only 15 percent of our senior military and intelligence staff (Rice, 2016), but I wish to assure everyone that what matters to homeland security and to us here is professionalism and integrity, hard work and courage, nothing beyond.
The specifics of our work imply that you may be seeing my name more often than I might be seeing you. Nevertheless, as your Chief of Staff, I assure you that you will be receiving all the professional support you need in serving the people of this country!
References
Bender, B. (2016). Trump names Mike Flynn national security adviser. Retrieved January 14, 2017, from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/michael-flynn-national-security- adviser-231591
National Security Council. (n.d.). Retrieved January 14, 2017, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/nsc
Rice, C. (2016). Building a National Security Workforce That Fully Reflects America. Retrieved January 14, 2017, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/10/05/building-national-security-workforce- fully-reflects-america
